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Formula One, also known as Formula
1 or F1, and currently officially
referred to as the FIA Formula One World
Championship, is the highest class of auto racing sanctioned by the Fédération
Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The "formula" in the name refers to a set of rules
to which all participants and cars must comply. The F1 season
consists of a series of races, known as Grands Prix, held on
purpose-built circuits,
and to a lesser extent, former public roads and closed city
streets. The results of each race are combined to determine two
annual World Championships, one for the drivers and one
for the constructors,
with racing drivers, constructor teams, track officials, organizers
and circuits required to be holders of valid Super Licences, the highest class racing
licence issued by the FIA.

Formula One cars race at high
speeds, up to with engines revving up to a formula imposed limit of
19,000 RPM. The cars are
capable of pulling in excess of 5 g-forces
in some curves. The performance of the cars is highly dependent on
electronics (although traction control and driving aids have been
banned since 2008), aerodynamics,
suspension and on tyres. The formula has seen many evolutions and changes
through the history of the sport.

Europe is Formula One's traditional centre,
where all of the teams are based, and where around half of the
races take place. However, the sport's scope has expanded
significantly in recent years and Grands Prix are held all over the
world. Events in Europe and the Americas have been dropped in
favour of races in Asia and the Far East - of the seventeen races in 2009, eight
were held outside Europe.

Formula One is a massive television event, with a global audience
of 600 million people per season. The Formula One Group is the legal holder of
the commercial rights . As the world's most expensive sport, its
economic effect is significant, and its financial and political
battles are widely covered. Its high profile and popularity make it
an obvious merchandising environment, which leads to very high
investments from sponsors, translating into extremely high budgets
for the constructor
teams . However, mostly since 2000, due to the always
increasing expenditures, several teams, including works teams from
car makers and those teams with minimum support from the automotive
industry or other F1 teams, have gone bankrupt or been bought out
by companies that want to easily establish a racing team within the
sport.

History

The Formula One series has its roots in the European Grand Prix Motor Racing
(q.v. for pre-1947 history) of the 1920s and 1930s. The
"formula" is a set of rules which all
participants and cars must meet. Formula One was a new formula
agreed after World War II in 1946, with
the first non-championship races being held that year. A number of
Grand Prix racing organisations had laid out rules for a World
Championship before the war, but due to the suspension of racing
during the conflict, the World Drivers' Championship was not
formalised until 1947. The first world championship race was held at
Silverstone, United Kingdom in 1950. A championship for
constructors followed in 1958. National championships existed in
South Africa and the UK in the 1960s
and 1970s. Non-championship Formula One races were held for many
years but, due to the rising cost of competition, the last of these
occurred in 1983.

The sport's title, Formula One, indicates that it is intended to be
the most advanced and most competitive of the FIA's racing
formulae.

Return of racing

The first
Formula One World Championship was won by ItalianGiuseppe Farina in his Alfa Romeo in 1950, barely defeating his Argentine teammate Juan Manuel
Fangio. However Fangio won the title in 1951, 1954, 1955, 1956 & 1957 (His record of five World
Championship titles stood for 45 years until German driver Michael Schumacher took his sixth title
in 2003), his streak interrupted after an injury by two-time
champion Alberto Ascari of Ferrari. Although the UK's Stirling Moss was able to compete regularly,
he was never able to win the World Championship, and is now widely
considered to be the greatest driver never to have won the title.
Fangio, however, is remembered for dominating Formula One's first
decade and has long been considered the "grand master" of Formula
One.

The period
was dominated by teams run by road car manufacturers—Alfa Romeo,
Ferrari, Mercedes Benz and
Maserati - all of
whom had competed before the war. The first seasons were run
using pre-war cars like Alfa's 158. They were front engined, with narrow treaded tyres
and 1.5 litre supercharged or 4.5 litre normally
aspirated engines. The 1952
and 1953 world championships
were run to Formula Two regulations, for
smaller, less powerful cars, due to concerns over the number of
Formula One cars available. When a new Formula One, for engines
limited to 2.5 litres, was reinstated to the world
championship in 1954, Mercedes-Benz introduced the advanced
W196, which featured innovations
such as desmodromic valves and
fuel injection as well as enclosed
streamlined bodywork. Mercedes won the drivers championship for two
years, before withdrawing from all motorsport in the wake of the
1955 Le Mans
disaster.

In 1962, Lotus introduced a
car with an aluminium sheet monocoque
chassis instead of the traditional space
frame design. This proved to be the greatest technological
breakthrough since the introduction of mid-engined cars. In
1968, Lotus painted Imperial Tobacco livery on their cars, thus
introducing sponsorship to the
sport.

Aerodynamic downforce slowly gained
importance in car design from the appearance of aerofoils in the late 1960s. In the late 1970s,
Lotus introduced ground effect
aerodynamics that provided enormous downforce and greatly increased
cornering speeds (though the concept had previously been used on
Jim Hall'sChaparral 2J in 1970). So great were the
aerodynamic forces pressing the cars to the track, (up to 5 times
the car's weight), that extremely stiff springs were needed to
maintain a constant ride height, leaving
the suspension virtually solid, depending entirely on the tyres for
any small amount of cushioning of the car and driver from
irregularities in the road surface.

Big business

Beginning in the 1970s, Bernie
Ecclestone rearranged the management of Formula One's
commercial rights; he is widely credited with transforming the
sport into the billion-dollar business it is today. When Ecclestone
bought the Brabham team in 1971 he gained a seat on the Formula One Constructors'
Association and in 1978 became its President. Previously the
circuit owners controlled the income of the teams and negotiated
with each individually, however Ecclestone persuaded the teams to
"hunt as a pack" through FOCA. He offered Formula One to circuit
owners as a package which they could take or leave. In return for
the package almost all are required to surrender trackside
advertising.

The formation of the Fédération
Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA) in 1979 set off the
FISA-FOCA war, during which FISA and
its president Jean-Marie
Balestre clashed repeatedly with FOCA over television revenues
and technical regulations. The Guardian said of FOCA that
Ecclestone and Max Mosley "used it to
wage a guerrilla war with a very long-term aim in view." FOCA
threatened to set up a rival series, boycotted a Grand Prix and
FISA withdrew its sanction from races. The result was the 1981
Concorde Agreement, which
guaranteed technical stability, as teams were to be given
reasonable notice of new regulations. Although FISA asserted its
right to the TV revenues, it handed the administration of those
rights to FOCA.

FISA imposed a ban on ground effect aerodynamics in 1983. By then, however,
turbocharged engines, which Renault had pioneered in 1977, were producing over and were
essential to be competitive. By 1986, a BMW turbocharged engine
achieved a flash reading of 5.5 bar
pressure, estimated to be over in qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix. The following
year power in race trim reached around , with boost pressure
limited to only 4.0 bar. These cars were the most powerful
open-wheel circuit racing cars ever.
To reduce engine power output and thus speeds, the FIA limited fuel
tank capacity in 1984 and
boost pressures in
1988 before banning
turbocharged engines completely in 1989.

The development of electronic driver aids began in the 1980s. Lotus
began to develop a system of active
suspension which first appeared in 1982 on the F1 Lotus 91 and Lotus
Esprit road car. By 1987, this system had been perfected and
was driven to victory by Ayrton Senna
in the Monaco Grand Prix that
year. In the early 1990s, other teams followed suit and semi-automatic gearboxes and
traction control were a
natural progression. The FIA, due to complaints that technology was
determining the outcome of races more than driver skill, banned
many such aids for 1994.
This led to cars that were previously dependent on electronic aids
becoming very "twitchy" and difficult to drive (notably the
Williams FW16), and many observers
felt that the ban on driver aids was a ban in name only as they
"have proved difficult to police effectively".

The teams signed a second Concorde Agreement in 1992 and a third in
1997, which expired on the last day of 2007.

On the
track, the McLaren and Williams teams dominated the 1980s and 1990s,
with Brabham also being competitive in the
early part of the 1980s, winning two drivers' championships with
Nelson Piquet. Powered by
Porsche, Honda, and Mercedes-Benz, McLaren won
sixteen championships (seven constructors', nine drivers') in that
period, while Williams used engines from Ford, Honda, and Renault to also win
sixteen titles (nine constructors', seven drivers'). The rivalry
between racing legends Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost became F1's central focus in
1988, and continued until
Prost retired at the end of 1993. Senna died at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix after
crashing into a wall on the exit of the notorious curve Tamburello, having taken over Prost's
lead drive at Williams that year. The FIA worked to improve the
sport's safety standards since that weekend, during which Roland Ratzenberger also lost his life
in an accident during Saturday qualifying. No driver has died on
the track at the wheel of a Formula One car since, though two track
marshals have lost their lives, one at the 2000 Italian Grand Prix, and the
other at the 2001 Australian
Grand Prix.

Since the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger, the FIA
has used safety as a reason to impose rule changes which otherwise,
under the Concorde Agreement, would have had to be agreed upon by
all the teams — most notably the changes introduced for
1998. This so called 'narrow
track' era resulted in cars with smaller rear tyres, a narrower
track overall and the introduction of 'grooved' tyres to reduce
mechanical grip. There would be four grooves, on the front and
rear — although initially three on the front tyres in the
first year — that ran through the entire circumference of the
tyre. The objective was to reduce cornering speeds and to produce
racing similar to rain conditions by enforcing a smaller contact patch between tyre and track. This,
according to the FIA, was to promote driver skill and provide a
better spectacle.

Results have been mixed as the lack of mechanical grip has resulted
in the more ingenious designers clawing back the deficit with
aerodynamic grip — pushing more force onto the tyres through
wings, aerodynamic devices etc — which in turn has resulted in
less overtaking as these devices tend to make the wake behind the
car 'dirty' (turbulent) preventing other cars from following
closely, due to their dependence on 'clean' air to make the car
stick to the track. The grooved tyres also had the unfortunate side
effect of initially being of a harder compound, to be able to hold
the groove tread blocks, which resulted in spectacular accidents in
times of aerodynamic grip failure (e.g., rear wing failures), as
the harder compound could not grip the track as well.

Drivers from McLaren, Williams, Renault (formerly Benetton) and
Ferrari, dubbed the "Big Four", have won every World Championship
from 1984 to 2008. Due to the technological
advances of the 1990s, the cost of competing in Formula One rose
dramatically. This increased financial burden, combined with four
teams' dominance (largely funded by big car manufacturers such as
Mercedes-Benz), caused the poorer independent teams to struggle not
only to remain competitive, but to stay in business. Financial
troubles forced several teams to withdraw. Since 1990, twenty-eight teams have pulled
out of Formula One. This has prompted former Jordan owner Eddie
Jordan to say that the days of competitive privateers are
over.

Manufacturers' return (Early to late 2000's)

Michael Schumacher and Ferrari
won an unprecedented five consecutive drivers’ championships and
six consecutive constructors’ championships between 1999 and 2004.
Schumacher set many new records, including those for Grand Prix
wins (91), wins in a season (13 of 18), and most drivers'
championships (7). Schumacher's championship streak ended on
September 25, 2005 when Renault driver Fernando Alonso became Formula One’s
youngest champion at that time. In 2006, Renault and Alonso won
both titles again. Schumacher retired at the end of 2006 after
sixteen years in Formula One.

During this period the championship rules were frequently changed
by the FIA with the intention of improving the on-track action and
cutting costs. Team orders, legal since
the championship started in 1950, were banned in 2002 after several
incidents in which teams openly manipulated race results,
generating negative publicity, most famously by Ferrari at the
2002 Austrian Grand Prix.
Other changes included the qualifying format, the points scoring
system, the technical regulations and rules specifying how long
engines and tyres must last. A 'tyre war' between suppliers
Michelin and Bridgestone saw lap times fall, although at the
2005 United States Grand
Prix at Indianapolis seven out of ten teams did not race when
their Michelin tyres were deemed unsafe for use. During 2006, Max
Mosley outlined a ‘green’ future for Formula One, in which
efficient use of energy would become an important factor. And the
tyre war ended, as Bridgestone became the sole tyre supplier to
Formula One for the 2007 season.

Since 1983, Formula One had been dominated by specialist race teams
like Williams, McLaren and Benetton, using engines supplied by
large car manufacturers like Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Renault and
Ford. Starting in 2000, with Ford’s creation of the largely
unsuccessful Jaguar team, new
manufacturer-owned teams entered Formula One for the first time
since the departure of Alfa
Romeo and Renault at the end of 1985. By 2006, the manufacturer
teams–Renault, BMW, Toyota, Honda and Ferrari–dominated the
championship, taking five of the first six places in the
constructors' championship. The sole exception was McLaren, which
is part-owned by Mercedes Benz. Through the Grand Prix Manufacturers
Association (GPMA) they negotiated a larger share of Formula
One’s commercial profit and a greater say in the running of the
sport.

Manufacturers' decline and new teams (Late 2000's and
Present)

Towards the end of the 2000's, Honda, BMW and Toyota have all
pulled out of Formula 1 within the space of a year, blaming the
economic depression as the reason. This led to the end of
manufacturer dominance within the sport, as shown by the pace of
Brawn GP and Red Bull-Renault in the 2009 season, dominating the
sport at the expense of the manufacturers (Ferrari being the only
manufacturer to win a race). The 2010 formula 1 season will,
however, see Mercedes Benz enter the sport as a manufacturer after
its purchase of Brawn GP and split with Mclaren after 15 seasons
with the team. This will leave Mercedes, Renault and Ferrari as the
only car manufacturers in the sport and the only engine suppliers
(with Renault's commitment to the sport to be decided in December).
AT&T Williams however confirmed towards the end of 2009 their
new engine deal with the private engine company Cosworth. The
company will also supply the wave of new teams USF1, Manor GP,
Campos Meta and the newly owned Lotus F1 team. The exit of car
manufacturers has also paved the way for teams representing their
countries, with some having the financial backing of their
respective national governments (such as Lotus), something not seen
since the 1930s. These "nationality teams" include Force India,
USF1 (the first team in recent years to be based outside Europe),
and Lotus, representing India, America, and Malaysia
respectively.

Possible breakaway

As a result of the ongoing governance crisis in Formula One, the
eight remaining teams of the Formula One Teams Association
(FOTA) announced on
June 18, 2009 that they had no choice but to form a breakaway
championship series.

The crisis originally formed around the proposed implementation of
several radical changes to the 2010 regulations, most importantly
the introduction of a £30 million budget cap (later revised to £40
million), approved by the World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) on March
17.

Under the proposed technical regulations, teams operating with the
budget cap would be granted greater technical freedom, which
included adjustable front and rear wings and an engine not subject
to a rev limiter.

The FOTA believed that allowing some teams to have such technical
freedom would have created a ‘two-tier’ championship, and thus
requested urgent talks with the FIA.
Talks
broke down resulting in four of the teams, Ferrari, Renault, Red Bull and Torro Rosso threatening not to sign on
for the 2010 championship unless the rules were
revised.

FOTA and the FIA again met for talks which again broke down, causing
Ferrari to launch legal action to
prevent the regulations from being applied, claiming that a
previously signed contract between themselves and the FIA gave them right to veto any new rules, a clause
which they believe the FIA ignored. The
injunction was rejected in French courts.

On May 25, Williams broke ranks with
FOTA by submitting an
entry for the 2010 season and were subsequently suspended
indefinitely, which brought the number of teams active in FOTA down to nine.

On May 29, the remaining FOTA teams submitted a joint,
conditional entry which they state is only to be accepted if the
proposed rules were amended to their preference. Seven days later,
Force India revealed that they followed
Williams and submitted an unconditional
entry for the 2010 season and were also suspended.

The FIA released the list of competing teams for
the 2010 season on June 12. 2009 competitors were included with the
addition of USGPE, Manor Grand Prix and Campos Grand Prix. The FIA recognized the conditional nature of five of the
FOTA teams while
automatically accepting the entries of Ferrari, Red
Bull and Torro Rosso. The
remaining conditional teams were given a week to submit
unconditional entries.

A day before the final submission deadline, FOTA announced that they were
unified in creating a breakaway championship series due to the
apparently irreconcilable differences between their views and those
of the FIA.

The FIA threatened legal action against the
FOTA teams, claiming
that they, and Ferrari in
particular, had broken a signed contract to compete. It was
estimated that the proposed lawsuit could be for as much as $1
billion.

On June 21, Max Mosley decided that the
FIA would not sue the teams, insisting instead
that reconciliation was close. Flavio
Briatore denied the next day that a deal was close, insisting
that FOTA was pressing
on with their breakaway championship.

On June 24, an agreement was reached between Formula One's
governing body and the teams to prevent a breakaway series. It was
agreed that the teams must cut spending to the level of the early
1990s within two years, however exact figures were not
specified.

However, shortly after this peace deal was reached on Wednesday,
Max Mosley was reported as being
'furious' over remarks made by Luca Cordero di Montezemolo.
Mosely, who clearly felt let down by the comments, later told the
media that he was to 'leave his options open'.

The statement, released by Luca Cordero di Montezemolo,
described Max Mosley as a dictator, also
mentioning that he had been forced out of office with Michel Boeri taking his place until a new
leader was elected in October. Mosley described these statements as
being false as well as 'grossly insulting to the 26 members of the
World Motor Sport Council who have discussed and voted all the
rules and procedures of Formula One since the 1980s, not to mention
the representatives of the FIA's 122 countries who have
democratically endorsed everything I and my World Motor Sport
Council colleagues have done during the last 18 years'.

No apology was issued by FOTA or Luca Cordero di Montezemolo,
sparking speculation that Max Mosley will
seek re-election in October which would plunge Formula One back
into crisis. Mosley's agreement to step down at the conclusion of
his term was one of the major factors resulting in the
reconciliation of FOTA with Formula One.

On 8 July, the FOTA
published a press release stating that they had been informed that
they were not entered for the 2010 season. An FIA press release,
published on the same date and regarding the same meeting, said the
FOTA representatives had walked out of the meeting.

On August 1, it was announced that the FIA had signed the new
Concorde Agreement, bringing an end to the crisis and securing the
sport's future until 2012.

Outside the World Championship

Currently, the terms "Formula One race" and "World Championship
race" are effectively synonymous; since 1984, every Formula One
race has counted towards an Official FIA World Championship, and
every World Championship race has been to Formula One regulations.
This has not always been the case, and in the earlier history of
Formula One many races took place outside the world
championship.

European non-championship racing

In the early years of Formula One, before the world championship
was established, there were around twenty races held from late
Spring to early Autumn in Europe, although not all of these were
considered significant. Most competitive cars came from Italy,
particularly Alfa Romeo. After the start of the world championship
these non-championship races continued. In the 1950s and 1960s,
there were many Formula One races which did not count for the World
Championship (e.g., in 1950, a total of twenty-two Formula One
races were held, of which only six counted towards the World
Championship). In 1952 and 1953, when the world championship was
run for Formula Two cars, a full season of non-championship Formula
One racing took place. Some races, particularly in the UK,
including the Race of
Champions, Oulton
Park International Gold Cup and International Trophy, were attended by
the majority of the world championship contenders. These became
less common through the 1970s and 1983 saw the last
non-championship Formula One race: The 1983 Race of Champions at
Brands Hatch, won by reigning World Champion Keke Rosberg in a
Williams Cosworth in a close fight with American Danny Sullivan.

South African Formula One championship

South Africa's flourishing domestic Formula One championship ran
from 1960 through to 1975. The frontrunning cars in the series were
recently retired from the world championship although there was
also a healthy selection of locally built or modified machines.
Frontrunning drivers from the series usually contested their local
World Championship Grand Prix, as well as occasional European
events, although they had little success at that level.

British Formula One Series

The old fashioned DFV helped make the
UK domestic Formula One series possible between 1978 and 1980. As
in South Africa a generation before, second hand cars from
manufacturers like Lotus and Fittipaldi Automotive were the order
of the day, although some, such as the March 781, were built
specifically for the series. In 1980, the series saw South African
Desiré Wilson become the only
woman to win a Formula One race when she triumphed at Brands Hatch
in a Wolf WR3.

Racing and strategy

A Formula One Grand Prix event spans a weekend, beginning with two
free practice sessions on Friday (except in Monaco, where Friday
practices are moved to Thursday), and one free practice on
Saturday. Additional drivers (commonly known as third drivers) are allowed to run on Fridays,
but only two cars may be used per team, requiring a race driver to
give up their seat. A Qualifying session is held after the last
free practice session. This session determines the starting order
for the race.

Qualifying

A typical pitwall control centre, from
which the team managers and strategists communicate with their
drivers and engineers over the course of a testing session and race
weekend.

For much of the sport's history, qualifying sessions differed
little from practice sessions; drivers would have an entire session
in which to attempt to set their fastest time, sometimes within a
limited number of attempts, with the grid order determined by each
driver's the best single lap, fastest (on pole position) to
slowest. Grids were limited to the fastest 26 cars and drivers had
to lap within 107% of the pole sitter's time to qualify for the
race. Other formats have included Friday pre-qualifying, and
sessions in which each driver was allowed only one qualifying lap,
run separately in a predetermined order.

The current qualifying system, known as "knock-out" qualifying and
adopted starting with the 2006 season, is split into three periods.
In each period, drivers run qualifying laps to attempt to advance
to the next period, running as many laps as they wish, with the
slowest drivers being "knocked out" at the end of the period and
their grid positions set. Cars are eliminated in this manner until
10 cars remain eligible to attempt to qualify for pole position in
the third and final period. For each period, all previous times are
reset, and only a driver's fastest lap in that period (barring
infractions) counts. Under current rules, for all periods, any
timed lap started before the chequered flag falls signalling the
end of that period may be completed, and will count toward that
driver's placement, even if they cross the finish line after the
period has ended. In the first two periods, cars may run any fuel
load they wish, and drivers eliminated in these periods are allowed
to refuel prior to the race. Cars taking part in the final period,
however, must start the race with the fuel load left at the end of
qualifying, meaning they must run the final period with their
desired initial race fuel load in addition to fuel sufficient to
complete the qualifying period itself.

For example, for a 20-car grid, all 20 cars are permitted to take
part in the first period. At the end of the period, the slowest
five cars are eliminated and take up the last five grid positions
(16 to 20) in the order of their times. In the second period, the
remaining fifteen cars take part, with five more cars eliminated at
the end, taking the next five lowest grid positions (11 to 15). In
the third and final period, the remaining 10 cars compete for pole
position, and fill grid positions 1 through 10.

The knock-out format has received minor updates since its
inception, such as adjustments to the number of drivers eliminated
in each period as the total number of cars entered has
changed.

The race

The race begins with a warm-up lap, after which the cars assemble
on the starting grid in the order they qualified. This lap is often
referred to as the formation lap, as the cars lap in formation with
no overtaking (although a driver who makes a mistake may regain
lost ground provided he has not fallen to the back of the field).
The warm up lap allows drivers to check the condition of the track
and their car and it also gives the tyres a chance to get some heat
in them to get some much needed traction, and also allows the pit
crews to clear themselves and their equipment from the grid.

Once all the cars have formed on the grid, a light system above the
track indicates the start of the race. Five red lights are
illuminated one-by-one. The five lights are then extinguished
simultaneously (instead of showing a green light), after a computer
generated random time (typically less than 3 seconds) to signal the
start of the race. The start procedure may be abandoned if a driver
stalls on the grid, signalled by flashing amber lights. If this
happens the procedure will restart and a new formation lap will
begin and the offending car removed from the grid. The race may
also be restarted in the event of a serious accident or dangerous
conditions, with the original start voided. The race may also be
started from behind the Safety Car if officials feel a racing start
would be excessively dangerous. There is no formation lap when
races start behind the Safety Car.

The winner of the race is the first driver to cross the finish line
having completed a set number of laps (which added together should
give a distance of approximately (or for Monaco). Races are limited to two hours,
although only tend to last this long in the case of extreme
weather. Drivers may overtake one another for position over the
course of the race and are 'Classified' in the order they finished
the race. If a leader comes across a back marker who has completed
fewer laps than him, the back marker is shown a blue flag telling
him he is obliged to pull over to allow the leader to overtake him.
The slower car is said to be 'lapped' and once the leader finishes
the race is classified as finishing the race 'one lap down'. A
driver can be lapped numerous times, by any car in front of him. A
driver who fails to finish a race, through mechanical problems,
accident or any other reason is said to have retired from the race
and is 'Not Classified' in the results.

Throughout the race, drivers may make pit
stops in order to refuel and change tyres. Different teams and
drivers will employ different pit stop strategies in order to
maximise their car's potential. There are two tyre compounds made
available to drivers with different characteristics. Over the
course of a race, drivers must use both available tyre compounds.
One compound will have a performance advantage over the other and
choosing when to use which compound is a key tactical decision to
make. The softer of the available tyre compounds are marked with a
green stripe on the tyre's sidewall to help spectators to
understand the strategies. Under wet conditions drivers may switch
to specialised wet weather tyres with additional grooves, and are
no longer obliged to use both types of dry tyres. Typically, a
driver will make between one and three scheduled stops, although he
may have to make further stops to fix damage or if weather
conditions change.

Safety Car

In the event of an incident that risks the safety of
competitors or trackside marshals, race officials may chose to
deploy the Safety Car. This in effect neutralizes the race, with
drivers following the Safety Car around the track in race order and
at reduced speeds with overtaking not permitted. The safety car
circulates until the danger is cleared when the race will restart
with a 'rolling start'. Pit stops are permitted under the Safety
Car.

Red Flag

In the event of a major incident or unsafe weather conditions,
the race may be red flagged. Depending on the race distance covered
at the time of the red flag, this can have several meanings:

* If under 3 laps have been completed, the race is restarted
from original grid positions. All drivers may take the restart,
provided their car is in a fit state to do so.

* If between 3 laps and 75% of the race distance have been
completed, the race may be restarted once it is safe to do so using
the race order at the time of the red flag. The two hour time limit
still applies and the clock does not stop.

* If more than 75% of the race distance has been completed then
the race is finished and the race result counted back to the second
last completed lap before the red flag.

The format of the Race has changed little through Formula One's
history. The main changes have revolved around what changes are
allowed at Pit Stops. In the early days of Grand Prix racing, a
driver would be allowed to continue a race in his teammates car
should his develop a problem. In recent years however, the focus
has been on refuelling and tyre-changes. From the 2010 season,
refuelling will be banned to encourage less tactical racing, having
only been re-introduced in 1994 following safety fears. The rule
requiring both compounds of tyre to be used during the race was
only introduced in 2008, again to encourage racing on the track.
The Safety Car is another relatively recent innovation that meant
fewer red flags were required, allowing races to be completed on
time for a growing international live television audience.

Points system

Points awarded for finishing position

Place

Points

1st

10

2nd

8

3rd

6

4th

5

5th

4

6th

3

7th

2

8th

1

Various systems for awarding championship points have been used
since 1950. In 2009, the top eight cars are awarded points, the
winner receiving 10 points. The total number of points won at each
race are added together and the driver and constructor with the
most points at the end of the season are World Champions. If both a
team's cars finish in the points, they both receive Constructors
Championship points, meaning the Drivers and Constructors
Championships often have different results.

To receive points a racer must be Classified. Strictly speaking in
order to be Classified a driver need not finish the race, but
complete at least 90% of the winner's race distance. Therefore, it
is possible for a driver to receive some points even though he
retired before the end of the race.

In the event that less than 75% of the race laps are completed,
only half points are awarded to the drivers and constructors. This
has happened on only five occasions in the history of the
championship, with the last occurrence at the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix when the
race was called off after 31 laps due to torrential rain.

A driver can switch teams during the season and keep any points
gained at the previous team.

From 2010, it is possible that the winner of the two annual
championships may be the driver with the most wins and the team
with the most points at the end of the season. In the case of a tie
in wins, the drivers' championship would be awarded to the driver
having the higher number of points; if these are equal, second
place finishes are considered, and so on. The scoring system
whereby the driver with the most wins (as opposed to most
accumulated points) becomes world champion was due to be introduced
for the 2009 season; however following protests from F1 teams and
drivers this rule change has been deferred until a possible 2010
introduction. The points system therefore remains unchanged for
2009.

Constructors

Ferrari have competed in every season,
and hold the record for most titles

The McLaren team won all but one race
in with Honda as its engine partner, and remains a championship
contender in the present day

Since 1981, Formula One
teams have been required to build the chassis in which they
compete, and consequently the terms "team" and "constructor" became
more or less interchangeable. This requirement distinguishes the
sport from series such as the IndyCar
Series which allows teams to purchase chassis, and "spec series" such as GP2, which require all cars be kept to an
identical specification. It also effectively prohibits privateer, which were common even in
Formula One well into the 1970s.

The sport's 1950 debut
season saw eighteen teams compete, but due to high costs many
dropped out quickly. In fact, such was the scarcity of competitive
cars for much of the first decade of Formula One that Formula Two
cars were admitted to fill the grids. Ferrari is the only
still-active team which competed in 1950.

Early manufacturer involvement came in the form of a "factory team"
or "works team" (that is, one owned and staffed by a major car
company), such as those of Alfa Romeo, Ferrari or Renault. After
having virtually disappeared by the early 1980s, factory teams made
a comeback in the 1990s and 2000s and now form half the grid with
Ferrari, BMW, Renault, Toyota and Honda either setting up their own
teams or buying out existing ones. Mercedes-Benz owns 40% of the
McLaren team and manufactures the team's engines. Factory teams
currently make up the top competitive teams; in 2008 wholly owned
factory teams took four of the top five positions in the
Constructors' Championship, and McLaren took the other. Ferrari
holds the record for having won the most Constructors'
Championships (fifteen).

Companies such as Climax, Repco, Cosworth, Hart, Judd and
Supertec, which had no direct team
affiliation, often sold engines to teams that could not afford to
manufacture them. In the early years independently owned Formula
One teams sometimes also built their engines, though this became
less common with the increased involvement of major car
manufacturers such as BMW, Ferrari, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Renault
and Toyota, whose large budgets rendered privately built engines
less competitive. Cosworth was the last independent engine
supplier, but lost its last customers after the 2006 season.
Beginning in 2007, the manufacturers' deep pockets and engineering
ability took over, eliminating the last of the independent engine
manufacturers. It is estimated that the big teams spend €100 to
€200 million ($125–$250 million) per year per manufacturer on
engines alone.

In the 2007 season, for the first time since the 1984 rule, two
teams used chassis built by other teams. Super Aguri started the season using a modified
Honda Racing's RA106 chassis (used by
Honda in the 2006 season), while Scuderia
Toro Rosso used a modified Red Bull
Racing RB3 chassis (same as the one used by Red Bull in the 2007 season). Such a
decision did not come as a surprise because of spiraling costs and
the fact that Super Aguri is partially owned by Honda and Toro
Rosso is half owned by Red Bull. Formula One team Spyker raised a complaint against this decision,
and other teams such as McLaren and Ferrari have officially
confirmed that they support the campaign. Because of this use of
other teams' chassis, the 2006 season could have been the last one
in which the terms "team" and "constructor" were truly
interchangeable. This attracted the Prodrive team to F1 to the 2008 season, where it
intended to run a customer car. After not being able to secure a
package from McLaren, Prodrive's intention to enter the 2008 season
was dropped after Williams threatened legal action against them.
Now, it seems that customer cars concept will be formally banned in
2010.

Although teams rarely disclose information about their budgets, it
is estimated that they range from US$66 million to US$400 million
each.

Entering a new team in the Formula One World Championship requires
a £25 million (about US$47 million) up-front payment to the FIA,
which is then repaid to the team over the course of the season. As
a consequence, constructors desiring to enter Formula One often
prefer to buy an existing team: B.A.R.'s purchase of Tyrrell and Midland's purchase of Jordan allowed both
of these teams to sidestep the large deposit and secure the
benefits that the team already had, such as TV revenue.

Drivers

The Formula One Drivers' Trophy

Modern drivers are contracted to a team for at least the duration
of the season, but drivers are often fired or even swapped during
the course of a season. Although most drivers earn their seat on
ability, commercial considerations also come into play with teams
having to satisfy sponsors and suppliers. Most teams also have a
spare driver, whom they bring to race weekends, in case of injury
or illness to a main driver. All competitors must be possession of
a FIA Super Licence.

Each driver is assigned a number. The previous season's champion is
designated number 1, with his team-mate given number 2. Numbers are
then assigned in order according to each team's position in the
previous season's constructors' championship. The number 13 is not
used.

There have been exceptions to this rule, such as in 1993 and 1994,
when the current World Drivers' Champion (Nigel Mansell and Alain Prost, respectively)
was no longer competing in Formula One. In this case the drivers
for the team of the previous year's champion are given numbers 0
(Damon Hill, on both occasions) and 2
(Prost himself and Ayrton Senna—replaced after his death by
David Coulthard and occasionally
Nigel Mansell–respectively). The number 13 has not been used since 1976, before which it was
occasionally assigned at the discretion of individual race
organisers. Before 1996,
only the world championship winning driver and his team generally
swapped numbers with the previous champion–the remainder held their
numbers from prior years, as they had been originally set at the
start of the 1974 season. For many years, for example, Ferrari held
numbers 27 and 28, regardless of their finishing position in the
world championship.

Jochen Rindt is the only posthumous
World Champion after his points total was not overhauled despite
his fatal accident at the 1970 Italian Grand Prix.

Michael Schumacher holds the record for having won the most
Drivers' Championships, with seven.

Feeder series

GP2, the main feeder series for
F1

Most F1 drivers start in kart racing
competitions, and then come up through traditional European single
seater series like Formula Ford and
Formula Renault to Formula 3, and finally the GP2 Series. GP2 started in 2005, replacing
Formula 3000, which itself had replaced
Formula Two as the last major "stepping
stone" into F1. Most champions from this level graduate into F1,
but 2006 GP2 champion Lewis Hamilton became the first F2, F3000 or
GP2 champion to win the Formula One driver's title in 2008. Drivers
are not required to have competed at this level before entering
Formula One. British F3 has supplied many
F1 drivers, with champions including Nigel Mansell, Ayrton Senna
and Mika Häkkinen having moved
straight from that series to Formula One. More rarely a driver may
be picked from an even lower level, as was the case with 2007 World
Champion Kimi Räikkönen,
who went straight from Formula Renault to F1.

American Championship
Car Racing has also contributed to the Formula One grid with
mixed results. CART Champions Mario
Andretti and Jacques
Villeneuve became F1 World Champions. Other CART or ChampCar
Champions, like Michael Andretti
and Cristiano da Matta won no
races in F1. Other drivers have taken different paths to F1; Damon
Hill raced motorbikes, and Michael Schumacher raced in sports cars, albeit after climbing through
the junior single seater ranks. To race, however, the driver must
hold an FIA Super Licence–ensuring
that the driver has the requisite skills, and will not therefore be
a danger to others. Some drivers have not had the license when
first signed to a F1 team; Räikkönen received the license despite
having only 23 car races to his credit.

Grands Prix

The number of Grands Prix held in a season has varied over the
years. Only seven races comprised the inaugural world championship
season; over the years the calendar has almost tripled in size.
Though the number of races had stayed at sixteen or seventeen since
the 1980s, it reached nineteen in .

Six of the
original seven races took place in Europe; the only non-European
race that counted towards the World Championship in 1950 was the
Indianapolis
500, which, due to lack of participation by F1 teams,
since it required cars with different specifications from the other
races, was later replaced by the United States Grand Prix.
The F1 championship gradually expanded to other non-European
countries as well. Argentina hosted the first South American grand prix in 1953, and Morocco hosted the first African
World Championship race in .Asia (Japan in ) and
Oceania (Australia
in ) followed. The current seventeen races are spread over
the continents of Europe, Asia, Oceania and South America.

Traditionally each nation has hosted a single Grand Prix, which
carries the name of the country. If a single country hosts multiple
Grands Prix in a year they receive different names. For instance, a
European country (such as Britain, Germany or Spain) which has
hosted two Grands Prix has the second one known as the European
Grand Prix, while Italy's second grand
prix was named after nearby republic of San Marino. Similarly, as two races were scheduled in
Japan in / , the second event was known as the Pacific Grand Prix. In , the United States hosted three Grands Prix.

The Grands Prix, some of which have a history that pre-dates the
Formula One World Championship, are not always held on the same
circuit every year. The British Grand Prix, for example, though held every year since 1950,
alternated between Brands
Hatch and Silverstone from 1963 to 1986.The only other race
to have been included in every season is the Italian
Grand Prix.The World Championship event has taken place
exclusively at Monza with just one exception: in 1980, it was held at Imola, host to the San Marino Grand Prix until .

One of the newest races on the Grand Prix calendar, held in
Bahrain, represents Formula One's first foray into the Middle East
with a high-tech purpose-built desert track. The Bahrain
Grand Prix, and other new races in China and Turkey, present new
opportunities for the growth and evolution of the Formula One Grand
Prix franchise while new facilities also raise the bar for other
Formula One racing venues around the world. In order to make
room on the schedule for the newer races, older or less successful
events in Europe and the Americas have been dropped from the
calendar, such as these in Argentina, Austria, Mexico, San Marino,
and the United States.

Circuits

A typical circuit usually features a stretch of straight road on
which the starting grid is situated. The pit lane, where the drivers stop for fuel and
tyres during the race, and where the teams work on the cars before
the race, is normally located next to the starting grid. The layout
of the rest of the circuit varies widely, although in most cases
the circuit runs in a clockwise direction. Those few circuits that
run anticlockwise (and therefore have predominantly left-handed
corners) can cause drivers neck problems due to the enormous
lateral forces generated by F1 cars pulling their heads in the
opposite direction to normal.

Most of the circuits currently in use are specially constructed for
competition. The current street circuits are Monaco, Melbourne, Valencia, and Singapore,
although races in other urban locations come and go (Las Vegas and Detroit, for example) and proposals for such races are
often discussed–most recently London and Paris.Several
other circuits are also completely or partially laid out on public
roads, such as Spa-Francorchamps. The glamour and history of the Monaco race
are the primary reasons why the circuit is still in use, since it
is thought not to meet the strict safety requirements imposed on
other tracks. Three-time World champion Nelson Piquet famously described racing in
Monaco as "like riding a bicycle around your living room" .

Circuit
design to protect the safety of drivers is becoming increasingly
sophisticated, as exemplified by the new Bahrain
International Circuit, added in and designed – like most of F1's new
circuits – by Hermann
Tilke. Several of the new circuits in F1, especially
those designed by Tilke, have been criticised as lacking the "flow"
of such classics as Spa-Francorchamps and Imola. His redesign of
the Hockenheim circuit in Germany for example, while providing more
capacity for grandstands and eliminating extremely long and
dangerous straights, has been frowned upon by many who argue that
part of the character of the Hockenheim circuits was the long and
blinding straights into dark forest sections. These newer circuits,
however, are generally agreed to meet the safety standards of
modern Formula One better than the older ones.

A single race requires hotel rooms to accommodate at least 5000
visitors. [1337]

Cars and technology

Modern Formula One cars are mid-engined open cockpit, open wheel single-seaters. The chassis is made largely of carbon fibre composites,
rendering it light but extremely stiff and strong. The whole car,
including engine, fluids and driver, weighs only 605 kg
(1334 lb) — the minimum weight set by the regulations.
The construction of the cars is typically lighter than the minimum
and so they are ballasted up to the minimum weight. The race teams
take advantage of this by placing this ballast at the extreme
bottom of the chassis, thereby locating the centre of gravity as
low as possible in order to improve handling and weight
transfer.

The cornering speed of Formula One cars is largely determined by
the aerodynamic downforce that they
generate, which pushes the car down onto the track. This is
provided by 'wings' mounted at the front and rear of the vehicle,
and by ground effect created
by low pressure air under the flat bottom of the car. The
aerodynamic design of the cars is very heavily constrained to limit
performance and the current generation of cars sport a large number
of small winglets, 'barge boards' and turning vanes designed to
closely control the flow of the air over, under and around the
car.

The other major factor controlling the cornering speed of the cars
is the design of the tyres. From to , the tyres
in Formula One were not 'slicks' (tyres
with no tread pattern) as in most other circuit racing series.
Instead, each tyre had four large circumferential grooves on its
surface designed to limit the cornering speed of the cars. Slick
tyres returned to Formula One in the season. Suspension is double wishbone or multilink all round with pushrod
operated springs and dampers on the
chassis. The only exception being on that of the 2009 specification
Red Bull Racing car (RB5) which uses pullrod suspension at the
rear, the first car in over 20 years to do so.

Carbon-Carbondisc brakes are used for reduced weight and
increased frictional performance. These provide a very high level
of braking performance and are usually the element which provokes
the greatest reaction from drivers new to the formula.

Engines must be 2.4 litre normally aspirated V8s, with many other constraints on their design and the
materials that may be used. Engines run on unleaded fuel closely
resembling publicly available petrol. The oil which lubricates and
protects the engine from overheating is very similar in viscosity
to water. The 2006 generation of engines spun up to
20,000 RPM and produced up to . For engines
were restricted to 19,000 RPM with limited development areas
allowed, following the engine specification freeze from the end of
. For the 2009 Formula One season the engines have been further
restricted to 18,000 RPM.

A wide variety of technologies – including active suspension,
ground effect, and turbochargers – are banned under the
current regulations. Despite this the current generation of cars
can reach speeds up to at some circuits. A Honda Formula One car,
running with minimum downforce on a runway in the Mojave desert achieved a top speed of in 2006.
According to Honda the car fully met the FIA Formula One
regulations. Even with the limitations on aerodynamics, at
aerodynamically generated downforce is equal to the weight of the
car, and the oft-repeated claim that Formula One cars create enough
downforce to "drive on the ceiling", while possible in principle,
has never been put to the test. Downforce of 2.5 times the car's
weight can be achieved at full speed. The downforce means that the
cars can achieve a lateral force with a magnitude of up to 3.5
times that of the force of gravity (3.5g) in cornering. A
high-performance road car like the Ferrari Enzo only achieves around 1g.
Consequently the driver's head is pulled sideways with a force
equivalent to the weight of 20 kg in corners. Such high
lateral forces are enough to make breathing difficult and the
drivers need supreme concentration and fitness to maintain their
focus for the one to two hours that it takes to complete the
race.

Revenue and profits

Estimated budget split of an F1 team
based on the season.

Formula 1 is profitable for most parties involved — TV
channels make profits from broadcasting the races, and teams get a
slice of the money from the sale of broadcasting rights and from
the sponsor's logos on their cars.

The cost
of building a brand new permanent circuit like that in Shanghai,
China can be up to hundreds of millions of dollars, while the cost
of converting a public road, such as Albert
Park, into a temporary circuit is much less.
Permanent circuits, however, can generate revenue all year round
from leasing the track for private races and other races, such as
MotoGP. The Shanghai circuit cost over $300
million. The owners are hoping to break-even by 2014. The Istanbul Park circuit cost $150 million to build.

Not all circuits make profits – Albert Park, for example, lost
$32 million in 2007.

Costs vary greatly from team to team. Honda, Toyota,
McLaren-Mercedes, and Ferrari are estimated to have spent
approximately $200 million on engines in 2006, Renault spent
approximately $125 million and Cosworth's 2006 V8 was
developed for $15 million. In contrast to the 2006 season on
which these figures are based, the 2007 sporting regulations ban
all performance related engine development.

Future

Formula One went through a difficult period in the early 2000s.
Viewing figures dropped, and fans expressed their loss of interest
due to the dominance of Michael Schumacher and Scuderia Ferrari.
Viewing figures are seeing some signs of recovery due to the varied
seasons since . Ferrari's and Schumacher's 5 year domination ended
in 2005 as Renault became the top team in Formula One, with
Fernando Alonso becoming the new
(and youngest ever at the time) World Champion. There has since
been a resurgence of interest in the sport, especially in Alonso's
home country of Spain, and Lewis
Hamilton's home country of Great Britain. In 2006, twenty-two
teams applied for the final twelfth team spot available for the
2008 season. The spot was
eventually awarded to former B.A.R. and Benetton team principal
David Richards' Prodrive
organization, but the team pulled out of the 2008 season in
November 2007.

The FIA is responsible for making rules to
combat the spiralling costs of Formula One racing (which affects
the smaller teams the most) and for ensuring the sport remains as
safe as possible, especially in the wake of the deaths of Roland
Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna in . To this end the FIA have
instituted a number of rule changes, including new tyre
restrictions, multi-race engines, and reductions on downforce.
Safety and cost have traditionally been paramount in all
rule-change discussions. More recently the FIA has added efficiency
to its priorities. Currently the FIA and manufacturers are
discussing adding bio-fuel engines and
regenerative braking for the
2011 season. FIA President Max Mosley
believes F1 must focus on efficiency to stay technologically
relevant in the automotive industry as well as keep the public
excited about F1 technology.

In the interest of making the sport truer to its role as a World
Championship, FOM president
Bernie Ecclestone has initiated and organised a number of Grands
Prix in new countries and continues to discuss new future races.
The sport's rapid expansion into new areas of the globe also leaves
some question as to which races will be cut.

Television

Formula One can be seen live or tape delayed in almost every
country and territory around the world and attracts one of the
largest global television audiences. The 2008 season attracted a
global audience of 600 million people per race. It is a massive
television event; the cumulative television audience was calculated
to be 54 billion for 2001 season, broadcast to two hundred
countries.

During the early 2000s, Formula One Administration
created a number of trademarks, an official logo, and an official
website for the sport in an attempt to give it a corporate
identity. Ecclestone experimented with a digital television package
(known colloquially as Bernievision),
which was launched at the 1996
German Grand Prix in cooperation with German digital television
service "DF1", thirty years after the first GP colour TV broadcast,
the 1967 German Grand Prix.
This service offered the viewer several simultaneous feeds (such as
super signal, onboard, top of field, backfield, highlights, pit
lane, timing), which were produced with cameras, technical
equipment and staff different from those used for the conventional
coverage. It was introduced in many countries over the years, but
was shut down after the 2002
season for financial reasons.

TV stations all take what is known as the 'World Feed', either
produced by the FOM (Formula One Management) or, occasionally, the
'host broadcaster'. The only station that originally differed from
this was 'Premiere' — a German channel which offers all sessions
live and interactive, with features such as the onboard channel.
This service was more widely available around Europe until the end
of 2002, when the cost of a whole different feed for the digital
interactive services was thought too much. This was in large part
because of the failure of the 'F1 Digital
+' Channel launched through Sky Digital in the United
Kingdom. Prices were too high for viewers, considering they could
watch both the qualifying and the races themselves free on ITV.

However, upon the commencement of its coverage for the 2009 season,
the BBC reintroduced complementary features such as "red button"
in-car camera angles, multiple soundtracks (broadcast commentary,
CBBC commentary for children, or ambient sound only) and a rolling
highlights package. Different combinations of these features are
available across the various digital platforms (Freeview, Freesat,
Sky Digital, Virgin Media cable and the BBC F1 web site) prior to,
during and after the race weekend - not all services are available
across all the various platforms due to technical constraints. The
BBC also broadcasts a post-race programme called "F1 Forum" on the
digital terrestrial platforms' "red button" interactive
services.

Bernie Ecclestone had announced that F1 would adopt the HD format near the end of the
2007 season. A subsequent announcement in early 2008 claimed that
the BBC would be broadcasting F1 for five years starting in 2009,
regaining the rights from ITV who had been broadcasting it since
1997. However, on 31 December 2008, Roger
Mosey, Director of BBC Sport announced
that F1 would not be broadcast on BBC HD
because "no HD world feed is available".

Other media

Formula 1 has an extensive web following, with most major TV
companies covering it such as the BBC. The
Formula 1 website is the official website for Formula One, and has
a live timing Java applet that can be used during the race to keep
up with the leaderboard in real time. Recently an official
application has been made available in the iTunes App Store that allows iPhone / iPod Touch users
to see a real time feed of driver positions, timing and
commentary.

Distinction between Formula One and World Championship
races

Currently the terms "Formula One race" and "World Championship
race" are effectively synonymous; since 1984, every Formula One
race has counted towards the World Championship, and every World
Championship race has been to Formula One regulations. But the two
terms are not interchangeable. Consider that:

the first Formula One race was held in 1947, whereas the World
Championship did not start until 1950.

in the 1950s and 1960s there were many Formula One races which
did not count for the World Championship (e.g., in 1950, a total of
twenty-two Formula One races were held, of which only six counted
towards the World Championship). The number of non-championship
Formula One events decreased throughout the 1970s and 1980s, to the
point where the last non-championship Formula One race was held in
1983.

the World Championship was not always exclusively composed of
Formula One events:

The World Championship was originally established as the "World
Championship for Drivers", i.e., without the term "Formula One" in
the title. It only officially became the Formula One
World Championship in 1981.

From
1950 to 1960, the Indianapolis 500 counted towards the World Championship. This
race was run to AAA/USAC regulations, rather than
to Formula One regulations. Only one of the world championship
regulars, Alberto Ascari in 1952, competed at Indianapolis during
this period.

From 1952 to 1953, all races counting towards the World
Championship (except the Indianapolis 500) were run to Formula Two
regulations. Formula One was not "changed to Formula Two" during
this period; the Formula One regulations remained the same, and
numerous Formula One races were staged during this time.

The distinction is most relevant when considering career summaries
and "all time lists". For example, in the List of Formula One drivers,
Clemente Biondetti is shown with
1 race against his name. Biondetti actually competed in
four Formula One races in 1950, but only one of these
counted for the World Championship. Similarly, several Indy 500
winners technically won their first world championship race, though
most record books choose to ignore this and instead only record
regular participants.

The most recent example of a "Formula One race" not being a "World
Championship race" very nearly occurred at the 2005 United States Grand Prix.
14 of the 20 drivers ended up not racing due to problems with their
Michelin tyres, and Max Mosley's refusal to find a suitable solution
to the problem left 9 of the ten teams in agreement about hosting a
non championship race. It was only because of Ferrari's refusal to
go with these plans that this alternative failed to take place,
although it was stated that Mosley had informed Mr Martin, the
FIA's most senior representative in the USA, that if any kind of
non-championship race was run, or any alteration made to the
circuit, the US Grand Prix, and indeed, all FIA-regulated
motorsport in the US, would be under threat". On the same day that
Stoddart's version of events was published, the FIA issued a
statement denying that Mosley had made the reported threat or that
any such conversation had taken place.

See also

References

The Ferguson
P99, a four-wheel drive design, was the last front-engined F1
car to enter a world championship race. It was entered in the
1961 British Grand Prix, the only
front-engined car to compete that year.

BMW's performance at the Italian GP is the highest qualifying
figure given in Bamsey. The estimate is from Heini Mader, who maintained
the engines for the Benetton team. It should be noted that
maximum power figures from this period are necessarily estimates;
BMW's dynamometer, for example, was only capable of
measuring up to . Figures higher than this are estimated from
engine plenum pressure readings. Power in race trim at that time
was lower than for qualifying due to the need for greater
reliability and fuel efficiency during the race.

BBC Sports, F1 viewing figures drop, 26 February 2002.
Retrieved on 10 March 2007. The cumulative figure, which exceeds
the total population of the planet by many times, counts all
viewers who watch F1 on any programme at any time during the
year.